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The sequence of denial, reluctance, and alarm in Indonesia’s response to the coronavirus crisis follows the trajectory of many other countries, including highly developed nations. Concerned about their economic impact, President Joko Widodo delayed containment measures and relied on unproven claims that tropical weather would slow down transmission in the world’s fourth most populous country. The bet did not pay off. Indonesia now faces a collapsing health system, an economic recession that could wipe out two decades of development gains, and the looming threat of social unrest.

No one can fault leaders for trying to maintain economic stability in Indonesia, where the devastation of the 1997 Asian financial crisis is seared into political memory. However, the government’s disregard for data, reliance on military personnel for crisis management, and political score-settling steered it away from a balancing act between the economy and health toward a strategy that has delivered worse results for both.

Sana Jaffrey is a nonresident scholar in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on violent conflict and the challenges of state-building in developing democracies.

In the absence of strict containment measures, Indonesia’s coronavirus deaths surged to become the highest in Southeast Asia. As of April 28, the government’s official count of positive cases surpassed 9,500 after tests were performed on 62,000 people, less than 0.02 percent of the total population. The country has recorded 773 deaths, including more than 40 doctors and nurses. The government also acknowledged the presence of over 213,000 suspected cases waiting to be tested.

The escalating crisis prompted the declaration of a national health emergency and the imposition of social distancing measures in Jakarta and other affected regions. Nationwide restrictions on commercial travel by air, sea, and land are now in effect. New equipment is being imported to ramp up testing, and efforts are underway to manufacture personal protective equipment for medical staff and urgently needed ventilators for patients. On March 13, the president announced a stimulus package worth $8 billion, which includes $324 million in assistance for low-income households.

These interventions may have come too late. According to the government’s own projections, 95,000 infections will be confirmed by the end of May. Independent researchers from the University of Indonesia predict 1.7 million infections and 144,000 deaths. Despite efforts to avoid a shutdown, Southeast Asia’s largest economy is in turmoil, with predictions of contraction by 0.4 percent that could plunge more than 9 million people into poverty. The latest survey data presents an even bleaker picture: 25 percent of adults (50 million people) report that they are already unable to meet their daily needs, creating concerns about urban riots.

Avertable Blunders

Indonesia could not have prevented the impact of the coronavirus altogether. Despite its middle-income status, it has the lowest per capita health expenditure among major regional economies. However, as one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, Indonesia has considerable experience mobilizing localized emergency responses. Far from perfect, past management of the SARS epidemic (2003), the Boxing Day tsunami (2004), and the Avian flu outbreak (2006) have been at least minimally competent. This time, three major flaws in the government’s approach prevented it from mobilizing even the limited resources that were at its disposal to mitigate the crush of a global pandemic.

Disregarding Data

First, a deep disregard for data in the administration created a false sense of choice: instead of preparing for the inevitable, officials looked for ways to avoid a response. While senior officials peddled unsubstantiated theories about the mild impact of the coronavirus in tropical weather, beleaguered doctors beseeched the president to ignore flawed advice and scientists complained about being shut out of the process.

Widodo has defended his administration’s response by noting scientists’ inability to provide definitive forecasts about coronavirus. But the government’s suppression of data on infection rates has only compounded this uncertainty, with deadly consequences.

In collecting official data, the Health Ministry initially insisted on counting only polymerase chain reaction tests performed in a single facility in Jakarta, ignoring the surge in suspected cases and positive results from the rapid antibody tests conducted by regional governments. Unconvinced by official figures, journalists pieced together data from cemeteries, medical records, and governors’ tallies to reveal that more than 2,200 suspected patients have died while awaiting tests.

Widodo admitted that data was concealed to prevent mass panic. More disturbingly, his administration used this flawed data to defer critical interventions. The delayed timing of ongoing measures to improve detection by distributing new testing equipment to regional labs compromises their effectiveness. Amid already high infection rates, testing may not stem contagion unless supplemented with mass isolation facilities for infected persons in densely populated cities, where people live in close quarters with large families.

Containment efforts also came late. A national task force to coordinate the government’s response was only formed in mid-March after a direct call from the World Health Organization. The declaration of a health emergency, providing the legal basis for social distancing measures, took another two weeks. Relatively lax by global standards, these restrictions did not prohibit domestic travel in and out of affected regions despite widespread fear of contagion. Ministers insisted that the low official estimate of deaths did not warrant stricter measures for the remaining 270 million people. The government finally banned most commercial travel on April 24 in a bid to prevent the annual Eid exodus of 20 million people, but an estimated 1.6 million had already made the journey.

Apart from delays, the ill-conceived sequencing of containment measures has accelerated both the health crisis and its economic fallout. Early on, the president wanted to avoid a regional lockdown due to its economic impact on the informal sector, which comprises nearly 60 percent of Indonesia’s workforce. However, his suggestion to work from home was adopted in urban areas by white collar workers, who are served by the informal workforce. Without their primary source of income or government aid, food vendors, barbers, and online motorbike drivers returned to their hometowns, exposing new communities to the virus.

Military Dominance

Second, military dominance in the management of the health crisis has produced an untenable combination of disarray and draconian law enforcement. All personnel in charge of coordinating the crisis response are retired army officers. This includes the head of the disaster management task force, the national spokesman on the coronavirus crisis, the health minister, the religious minister, the minister of maritime affairs and investment, the defense minister, and the president’s chief of staff. Widodo’s administration has the highest concentration of military personnel of any cabinet since the fall of Suharto’s military dictatorship in 1998.

A crisis of this scale anywhere in the world would require logistical support from the military. But the predominance of military personnel in top civilian posts has securitized Indonesia’s response to coronavirus. Widodo initially considered responding to the health crisis by declaring a civil emergency, which is legally reserved for fighting rebellions and civil war. Pushback from civil society groups prevented this move, but shortly thereafter the national police chief issued instructions to arrest individuals accused of causing offense to the president and other officials. At least 76 critics have since been detained, including a researcher who published an article about possible errors in the government’s coronavirus data.

The security focus of the administration has also prevented it from effectively mobilizing civilian sources of authority. Like other Asian countries, Indonesia maintains an extensive structure of neighborhood associations that collect health data and ensure public compliance with the government’s vaccination drives and family planning programs. Leaders of these associations also serve as the first point of contact in coordinating the government’s disaster response.

Instead of devising a national strategy to enforce containment measures through these grassroots bodies, the government ordered neighborhood leaders to use their discretion in responding to the crisis. In the absence of clear instructions or resources, community-level interventions are in disarray. Some neighborhood leaders have coordinated delivery of aid, and others have imposed local lockdowns. However, a growing number have responded by evicting exposed medical staff along with suspected patients and have also refused burial of victims.

Politicizing the Crisis

Finally, the administration’s politicization of the health crisis has impaired its ability to coordinate an effective response with regional leaders and civil society groups. This is most visible in the ongoing turf war between the central government and Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, who became the president’s bitter rival in 2016 after defeating his longtime ally in a religiously charged gubernatorial race.

Despite the fact that Baswedan’s Islamist allies have urged their followers to cancel religious gatherings and postpone travel, the president’s supporters have accused him of playing politics. In fact, the central government has systematically undermined Baswedan’s efforts to manage the crisis. Even though Jakarta is the nation’s coronavirus epicenter, his requests to impose social distancing measures were repeatedly denied. After the declaration of a nationwide health emergency, his request was held up further by the health minister and only approved after days of haggling over data.

The government’s relationship with civil society groups also continues to worsen even as their support remains critical for managing the crisis. In the middle of a pandemic, the parliament announced plans for a speedy passage of two highly unpopular bills. One is the criminal code that triggered deadly demonstrations last year and the other is a labor deregulation bill that was rejected by workers’ unions. Deliberations were finally suspended this week to avoid potentially violent clashes after unions issued a call for protests in defiance of mobility restrictions.

Short-Sighted Measures With Long-Term Costs

Apart from the alarming human tragedy that looms ahead, missteps in the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic may affect Indonesia’s long-term political trajectory in three ways. One is the acceleration of military resurgence in civilian affairs, already well underway in the current administration. Public outcry may have prevented the imposition of civil emergency in March, but it cannot be ruled out as the crisis unfolds. Handing emergency powers to security agencies without effective civilian oversight could deal a severe blow to two decades of struggle for civil liberties in Indonesia.

Second, ongoing power plays between the central and regional governments may force a reevaluation of Indonesia’s decentralization laws, which devolve power to districts and relegate governors to the role of a coordinator. The disjointed national response to the coronavirus and district governments’ inability to mount large-scale interventions has exposed the failings of this arrangement. Governors have emerged as effective intermediaries in the crisis by synchronizing district responses and forcing the center’s hand when necessary. Moving forward, their authority may have to be strengthened to streamline governance across the archipelago.

Finally, citizens’ trust in government could become another tragic casualty of the crisis. Indonesians are no strangers to coping with the devastation of natural disasters or to overcoming slow government intervention with community-based responses. Hopes were high when Widodo was elected on the basis of his administrative credentials, but civil society groups have once again had to compensate for the lack of a coherent government response with heroic generosity. Underpaid policewomen are donating their salaries, students at underfunded universities are testing low-cost ventilators, and unprotected doctors are creating digital platforms to treat their patients. This time, however, it seems that Indonesians’ resilience may be tested as much by the unprecedented scale of the global pandemic as by the magnitude of their government’s ineptitude.

Correction note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Indonesia has the highest number of coronavirus deaths, not total cases, in Southeast Asia.

I do strongly mark your article and its content are biased because you did only mentioned all the weakness and negative sides of Indonesia, you put too much provocative words to describe Indonesia as an incompetent country in dealing with covid outbreak and many other disasters. Please be noted!, as a professional content writer, you should have used and understood : what the contents are, factual or not, trusted data source or not, and most important is "biased or not". Thanks, hope you don't mind at all. I am not as talented as you wrote the article, but I did also learnt the steps and rules of how to write a good article.

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Expat in Indonesia

May 01, 202011:14 pm

Indonesia has taken a similar attirude as Sweden however with 17,000 islands and over 270 million people to suggest that they are ignoring other countries rea tions to any illness let alone the pandemic currently a great topic of discussion is not correct
Indonesia has a young population is a developing economy akin to The USA in the early 20th century .
It will be with interest to view your comments in another 18 months.
Viruses eventually dissapear as there as the majority of the people are infected .
I personally do not see your prediction of 144,000 people dieing in indonesia of this flu virus over the next two years
And if you would care to visit Indonesia today it is possible to see all villages taking responsibilty for their health within the context of this been a developing country with 70 % of people living of less than 2 dollars a day
Ask some one in the WESTERN developed world to imagine that

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Sasmito Wibowo

May 01, 202011:16 pm

Evaluating the Indonesian C19 Cases
Though the C19 (Covid-19) has spread out at least since early January 2020 from Wuhan, China, but it seems perceived by many countries will not infect them as fast as what finally happens. Indonesia declares it is infected in early March 2020, just when C19 start die-down in China. Seeing this situation, many people think that this virus can be handled easily.
In the complex and diversified country like Indonesia, any issue will be responded differently by different groups. Several local goverments are impatient to handle C19, while Central Government busy evaluating many available data causing divergent options.
Facing the health care condition, people ways of life, and inavailability corona virus vaccine yet, it seems that the Indonesian administration chooses preparing for the best expectations. It expects that by promoting healthy ways of life and implementing social/physical distancing and gradual lockdown, herd immunity will develop and the virus will disappear eventually. To comfort WHO, neighbooring countries, and some media commentators, the Indonesian government informs that one of its predictions about the number of infected people are above 100,000.
After long debate and conflicting decision process within the governments, the Indonesian version of lockdown is firstly applied in the capital city Jakarta since April 10th, 2020. Then it is followed gradually by the surrounding suburb cities and other epicenter cities in all over Indonesia. Hoping that this effort eventually will make C19 no place to stay on human body.
There are some issues when the C19 cases reach the peak, die-down, and disappear?
Studying the experiences of other countries and previous pandemics, the results are varied, but all of them show happily ever after. Hence, optimist expectation is realistic.
Regarding predicting the C19 peak cases in Indonesia, we find that there are at least three main predictions: late April, late May, and late June 2020. Why are there three main predictions? Statistically, it is possible that the peaks may occur more than one. In statistical term, we may find multimodal distribution. Culturally or religiously, late April 2020 is the initial Ramadan fasting month, late May 2020 is homecoming & the Idul Fitr celebration, and late June 2020 is the final returning from Home Coming. Of course, after the peak is reached, die-down is the following event.

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Patrick

May 04, 202012:44 am

This is total scare mungering i live in Jakarta and its not that bad at all , Instead of just posting inflated figures from different sources and general trying to creat hysteria you do better to just keep quiet, instead of writing over the top journalisn like this.

I AM PERPLEXED reading yiur story. Yes, Indonesia is facing problems in fighting Covid19, just like any other nation in the world. Yes president Widodo may have stumbled led into problems in the beginning, just like many other head of states. BUT IF CARNEGIE WANTED TO MAKE A SENSATION during this pandemic, why look so far to Indonesia. CARNEGIE JUST NEED TO LOOK NEXT DOOR IN WASHINGTON and see how the US President is squaring with the pandemic Covid-19, and how EVEN AMERICAN PRESS are absolutely APPALLED !!! There is a saying in my country : one sees a needle far away, but blind to see an elephant before ones eyes ....

Thank you for your in depth review of the issues on the government’s inability and incompetency in tackling the epidemic outbreak. You did not mention the release of 38,000 inmates amid isolation policies in some regions.

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masjo2111

May 04, 20208:04 pm

Dear Carnegie, if there were Indonesian tried to undermined your article when you discuss something bad about President Jokowi, please be aware that they are social media Buzzer paid by Indonesian Government. We Indonesians already knew those kind of thing. Any attempts that tried to expose any Jokowi flaws will be push over by those Buzzer. We already in the brimg of chaos and revolutions but all informations and communications are being selectively filtered by ID Government. Pls help us ... SOS ... SOS

To start my reply; personally I don't believe that there was one right way or one wrong way of dealing with this crisis with the massive amount of factors at play. It is evident that the rate in which the COVID-19 virus has spread caught everyone off guard. Choices that have been made were made to the best of abilities, given all the factors involved. History will teach us later which choices were good, and which choices were bad. And the country needs to remember the lessons learned right now for the future.

Having that said, I don't believe that the current official number of infections are reflecting the reality. As my partner is a medical specialist, I hear on a daily basis that the amount of patients that show symptoms of COVID-19 at the ER and poli are unreal. This fact alone isn't even the disturbing part. What is really disturbing is that patients actively try to hide their symptoms from the medical staff. Lying about their whereabouts and if they have been in contact with (suspected) COVID-19 patients. And to be honest, I can't blame them. When you see the media, people who are infected are being stigmatized and set away as outcasts. Most of the people have been ignorant for the better part of what COVID-19 is, how it spreads and what the consequences are if you become infected and what it doesn't mean if you are infected. If people at the hospital are tested or suspected to be infected, the hospital basically can't do anything for them. If they require medical treatment (e.g. hospitalized because of the effects of the virus - or worse - being admitted to the ICU) they are referred to other facilities. It is the people's own responsibility to actually go to these facilities. But it is an educated guess that many of the patients are never going to these facilities. Especially the ones with minor complaints. No body wants to be put in quarantine for weeks in a big building. Not voluntarily, not mandatory. The group with minor complaints are posing the biggest issue right now. Since they don't feel too bad, they assume it is ok to return to their daily activities. Often out of necessity, as no money equals to having no food. This is the group of people that are spreading the virus. This is also why the travel ban is in effect, but locally they can still cause problems. Maybe not to them, but potentially to others who are more vulnerable. What annoys me intensely is that mainstream media create a false sense of control. How I experience it is that they state with some pride that the number of cases is not too bad, that the show is going to be over soon, and we can all return back to normal again within weeks. But they neglect to share the low count in tests. I really miss a critical voice. If one would think logically, you should compare Indonesia to a country of similar size - and to a certain degree also to similar demographic characteristics and capabilities. Brazil and Pakistan are more or less similar to Indonesia. If you see the statistics of these countries, you see a much higher number of cases (Brazil: 162k / Pakistan: 30,5k ) and a higher rate of tests performed (Brazil: 339,5k / Pakistan: 294.5k ) than Indonesia (Cases: 14k / Tests: 158k). If you think with some common sense, you can safely assume that the real number of infections in Indonesia is in reality (much) higher than government and media would like people to believe. Despite all the good and bad intentions from the government, this crisis is far from over.

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Jkm

May 02, 20201:08 am

I'm sure the author got a lot of clicks with that sensentionalized headline -- which however does not reflect the actuality of the situation in Indonesia. The only catastrophe is when intelligent sounding reports, such as this one, are poorly researched and filled with meaningless and far-fetched conclusions and allegations.

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Diederik Zwager

May 03, 20207:23 am

Another commentary from the ivory tower, completely detached from reality on the ground. There is no proof that Indonesia's health system is collapsing from what is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and up to thirty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO. According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of the Wuhan coronavirus is between 0.1% and 0.37%. Indonesia did the right thing by not locking down the country in the way that richer countries can afford to, or can they? Stop pointing fingers at poorer countries, get your own house in order first.

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wawan

May 25, 20206:53 am

Sana Jaffrey has been researching Indonesia for more than 10 years, and she is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia. I knew it, since i used to work with her. She is an expert on her field on social studies, particularly Indonesia, and her analysis here about the bumbling response of Indonesian Government in handling the covid-19 crisis is accurate.
You should know that designated hospitals for COVID-19 patients in East Java, like Surabaya, are already overloaded and no more bed available. While the designated make-up hospital in Kemayoran Jakarta, is also on the verge of overload. The surge of COVID-19 outside the epicentrum in Jakarta mostly caused by the flip-flops of policy of Indonesian Government concerning the banning of "mudik" (annual exodus).

Carnegie Please hire a better writer who is willing to do a better research - This article has some truth to it but lack of understanding to the complexity of the problem in Indonesia. I am not against constructive article or discussing with people with different perspective - but give a solution, provide solving ideas, provide contribution. The article do not give two sides of perspective - one sided and too personal (and assumptions) without proper links, stats, survey, field observation. Knowing the writer has spent a few years living in Indonesia - it is sad to know her knowledge is limited and provocative. I am a volunteer working in Hospital for Covid-19 treatment facility in Indonesia.

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Don paul

May 04, 202011:54 pm

Yes a very true take on the coming situation here. The government is too slow at response and Masjids are still being visited and many not wearing masks. Lot of hiding and fake data. This countrys government and uneducated people have ruined this country.

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Navin

May 06, 20207:01 pm

As an expat living here for more than 2 years now, and the seeing the world and Indonesia fight the microscopic material (it is not a living thing), I would argue that everyone is clueless.. and therefore to have such a hard hitting article on Indonesia is uncalled for.. unless of course the real motive is to shake the Central Government administration to somehow start making decisions even faster.
Democracies around the world have shown how farcical they can be.. yes, in some countries for a few decades democracies work for the people.. but for the most part democracies have relegated the voting public to second class citizens behind the rich and powerful, bureaucrats and politicians!! Let me correct that to say that politicians around the world have not missed a chance to screw the people over in many different ways either for power or money or both!! And Indonesia is no different. The easy going attitude of people, huge and corrupt governments and regulatory bodies, conniving politicians, under invested and expensive education and health facilities, greedy conglomerates have all conspired to keep the fourth biggest country firmly in the developing country moniker. I don’t think Indonesia will get out of it in the next several decades as power and money remains concentrated in a few.
Coming back to the crisis itself, governments ranging from US to Britain and other European countries, India, Japan, Singapore have all faced the crisis in their own uncertain and what In many cases can now be termed as appalling ways. So Indonesia is not alone. With social distancing measures now in place for more than a month, the number of infections and deaths are bound to be impacted and controlled eventually. The economic costs of the containment strategy is huge and no one has a clue to how that can be reduced or overcome simultaneously. Again, same case in all countries, Indonesia is not unique.

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Bigyabbie

May 07, 202010:04 pm

While accurate in many ways, I think this article under-represents the intelligence of the Widodo government. Although on paper Jokowi won the last election by a comfortable margin, the Prabowo's post election refusal to accept the results, showed how close the balance of power really was. The post-election compromise needed to ensure political stability meant placing the leader of the opposition in charge of the Military along with placing military in many such powerful positions, including of course having General Doni Monado in charge of the National Disaster Management Agency.
Jokowi is no fool and nor are his advisers, and though it's easy to criticise from the outside, inside the administration the balance of power is very delicate. The 'potential' loss of tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives, must be balanced against loss of power, which in Indonesia could mean the collapse of democracy, military intervention and potentially even greater loss of lives. The bitter battle between the oligarchic soeharto era dictatorship families that Anies and Prabowo represent and the popularist presidency of Jokowi should not be underestimated, even in amongst Covid-19

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MiuMiu

May 08, 202011:10 pm

"Indonesia now faces a collapsing health system, an economic recession that could wipe out two decades of development gains, and the looming threat of social unrest" it is exaggeration in-proportional level. Today data (8 May 20) the number of people died due to Corona Virus in Indonesia is 930 while US is 76,905 and Italy, UK, Spain and Germany are in the range 25-30K people, and you said it is the collapse of health system?

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Hatanto

May 10, 202010:33 pm

I AM PERPLEXED reading yiur story. Yes, Indonesia is facing problems in fighting Covid19, just like any other nation in the world. Yes president Widodo may have stumbled led into problems in the beginning, just like many other head of states. BUT IF CARNEGIE WANTED TO MAKE A SENSATION during this pandemic, why look so far to Indonesia. CARNEGIE JUST NEED TO LOOK NEXT DOOR IN WASHINGTON and see how the US President is squaring with the pandemic Covid-19, and how EVEN AMERICAN PRESS are absolutely APPALLED !!! There is a saying in my country : one sees a needle far away, but blind to see an elephant before ones eyes ....

Clearly Jaffrey hasnt made any effort to conduct any study on the topic, except taking parts of different articles from the published media. The focus was not at all Corona virus in Indonesia, but bad mouthing about Indonesian internal politics. A very sad but expected degradation of American intellectuality

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